OCR Text |
Show 1897.] NEW AFRICAN MAMMALS. 431 mixed greyish and white, the hairs slaty grey basally, yellowish white terminally. Scrotum orange-yellow. No black markings on muzzle, round eyes, or on ears, all being equally rufous. The whiskers are, however, black. Tail brilliant rufous throughout, some of the hairs of the upper surface subterminally ringed with black. Skull elongate, smoothly rounded, with short backwardly directed postorbital processes. Nasals much expanded behind, their posterior breadth greater than their anterior. Two upper premolars present. Dimensions of the type, an adult male, in skin :- Head and body 258 m m . ; tail imperfect (of another specimen, without hairs (c.) 198, with hairs 260); hind foot, moistened, 52-5 ; ear 19*5. Skull-greatest length 56 ; greatest breadth 31 "7 ; nasals, length 15, breadth anteriorly 8, posteriorly 10*3; tip to tip of postorbital processes 23. Hab. Kombe Forest, Masuku Range, 7000 feet. Type. c*. Collected by M r . A. Whyte, July 1896. This splendid Squirrel, beside which even X. palliatus looked almost dull, was really not closely allied to that animal, but by the general shape of its skull and the expansion of its nasals posteriorly seemed to show a nearer relationship to X. cepapl and X. pyrrhopus. In any case, however, the alliance was a very distant one, and no detailed comparison with these or other species was required to prove its entire distinctness from anything hitherto known. SACCOSTOMUS ELEGANS, sp. n. Colour very much as in an Upper Shire specimen of S. campestris, from which it differs in its much longer and narrower skull, slenderer muzzle, less widely open anteorbital foramina, narrower interorbital region, straight front edge of interparietal, and small palatal foramina, which do not reach to the front edge of m.1. In some of these cranial characters S. elegans agreed with S. mashonce,De Wint., but differed from that species in its buffy or isabelline colour, instead of the slaty grey which is so peculiar in that form. Dimensions of the type, in skin, female :- Head and body 144 m m . ; tail 38 ; hind foot 18-8; ear 15. Skull-greatest length from tip of nasals to occiput 32-5: nasals 13-3 x 3 7 ; interorbital breadth 4-2; interparietal 3-2 x 6-4 ; diastema 10*1; palatal foramina 6x2-5; length of upper molar series 4*3. Hab. Karonga, Lake Nyasa. MUS NTIKcE, sp. n. Similar in size and proportions to M. chrysophilus, D e Wint., which also occurs on the plateau, but the general colour much browner, duller, and less yellow. The back grizzled black and 29* |